


letters

by gotham_ruaidh



Series: Gotham Writes for Imagine Claire & Jamie [111]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 13:15:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17550383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotham_ruaidh/pseuds/gotham_ruaidh
Summary: Jamie reflects as he writes the letter to Brianna. Inspired by 04x12.





	letters

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted at [Imagine Claire & Jamie](https://imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com/post/182272859714/imagine-jamie-compares-brianna-to-claire-while-she) on tumblr

It was an anonymous hour, deep in the night.

Jamie sat at the dining table, twirling his quill in the inkwell. Watching his wife and daughter sleep on the bed.

Tomorrow they would leave at first light – he and Claire and Ian to (somehow) follow the path Roger would have taken with the Mohawk, Murtagh and Brianna and Lizzie to River Run. His letters lay side-by-side at his elbow – one for Brianna to deliver to Jocasta, and one for Murtagh to post to John Grey, when he reached Wilmington.

How he hated to be indebted to others – to Jocasta, whose backhanded generosity he had scorned; to John, for foisting yet another of his children on him to care for. To Murtagh, for literally risking his neck by returning to Wilmington despite the broadsheets plastered with his face.

But he’d do it – and did do it, gladly – for the sake of the daughter he had only just begun to know.

She lay on his side of the bed, face turned toward him. Claire slept fitfully beside her, one arm thrown over Brianna’s shoulders. Holding her close – as she must have when Bree was a bairn.

He couldn’t help but think the impossible thought. Of what it would have been like, had he watched them like this, not in this cabin in the Carolina backwoods but in the laird’s bedroom at Lallybroch, the fire crackling the same way, a younger Bree’s hair glowing in the firelight. Claire soft with sleep and motherhood beside her – and perhaps another bairn, who had never had the chance to be born.

So many years lost. They had made such great progress in the past two months – why did he feel that none of that mattered now?

He’d be lucky to get any kind of polite goodbye from her in the morning, he knew. Any verbal message would be ignored. Her heart hurt. God knew he understood what that felt like.

How he longed to give her advice; to guide her; to shape her. Another man clearly held that place in her life – in her heart – and his soul ached to know it. The irony was that he had wanted it – had wanted Claire to want it.

Did that make him a hypocrite, to bear such jealousy for a dead man not yet born, when Claire and Brianna had done what he had wanted them to do?

Frank Randall was Brianna’s father in Claire’s time. But Bree had one father – Jamie Fraser – in this time. He could not shape her as a person, but he could shape how she made sense of her circumstances.

And it would take a good three months, at the very least, for the letter to make its way to John Grey in Virginia – and then for John Grey to make his way to River Run. Never mind that there was a chance – slim, but possible – that Jamie himself would never see Brianna again, never know whether she had even cared to read the letter.

But for twenty years he hadn’t known whether Claire had lived or died – whether the child had survived the passage through the stones – whether they were both safe and happy.

So.

He squared his shoulders, sighed, and dipped the quill.


End file.
